


Bitter Words

by Telesilla



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-01-10
Updated: 2000-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:06:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telesilla/pseuds/Telesilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing conversation between Curt and Brian that falls between the abortive studio scene and the scene where Curt walks off into the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter Words

"Well, if you didn't fucking listen to Jerry about goddamed everything!" Curt Wild yelled at his lover.

"This isn't about fucking Jerry!" Brian Slade hissed back.

"Well thank God for that," Curt replied. "Jerry's pretty low on my list of people to fuck."

"Your wit devastates me."

"Look, Brian," Curt said, his voice lowering into normality again. "This _is_ about Jerry. And you. _You're_ supposed to be producing this album. Jerry's just your damned manager. He's supposed to sell it when we're done with it. So why are he and the rest of the circus in on every second of recording? How can I make my music like that?"

"Curt, your music changes every time you go into the studio." Brian was trying to sound reasonable, producer-like.

Curt gulped down a tumbler of Jack and poured another. "Well doesn't everyone's?"

"Not the musicians."

"The Rattz . . ." Curt began.

"This isn't Curt Wild and The Rattz; this is just Curt Wild." Brian pinched his nose. Oh, why did this have to be so difficult?

"Then get some damned musicians that can fucking keep up with me."

"No _you_ keep up with us!"

"Fuck that! I'm the fucking singer; it's my fucking show!" Curt slammed back more Jack; filled the exquisite crystal tumbler with more and took another large gulp.

"Fine!" Brian snapped. He really didn't want to deal with this right now. "Find yourself another fucking producer to help yourself out your methadone and Jack Daniels gutter."

More Jack slammed back, this time straight out of the bottle. "Is that how you see it?" Curt's voice was deadly soft. "Maxwell Fucking Demon comes down out of the fucking stars and waves his glittery fairy wand and suddenly the poor mortal is transformed?" His voice had been slowly rising and now he too rose to his feet.

"You don't even fucking know who you are, you pathetic schizophrenic asshole!" he snarled at Brian. "Surrounded by Jerry and the traveling freak show, you're nothing but what they've made you to be!"

"Oh, and you don't have your myths . . . "

"The fucking difference, you shit, is that *I* don't believe them. That crap, my wolves and your pretty, 18th century faggy bisexuality . . . it's for the fucking _fans_ Brian!" Curt's voice, underneath the anger, was almost pleading now.

"You're fucking lost. You really are what Jerry and Shannon have turned you into. I'll bet there are days when you really think you _are_ ten feet tall." He ran his hand through tangled hair. "Come back to the real world and just be _Brian_ again. Save the Demon for the stage."

"I'm lost?" Brian screamed. "At least _I_ can still get a song out in less than 11 hours! At least _I_ don't need a bottle of Jack between each session. At least I can still get it up . . . "

The bottle hit the wall next to Brian, brown liquor and glass impacting with the perfect Georgian wallpaper. Brian turned his head, but one piece of glass sliced across his lip, leaving blood to mingle with already- smeared lipstick.

"GET OUT!" he screamed, totally missing the look of terror in Curt's eyes.

It took but a moment to grab his coat, before he was practically running from the house. He heard a window slam up behind him and Brian's voice, a combination of fury, hatred and fear, screaming at him.

"Piss off, then! Go on! Back to your wolves! Your junkie twerps! Your bloody shock treatment! And fuck you too!"

_Oh God,_ he thought as he stumbled into the London streets. _I can't get away from it._ A painful echo from the past, a bottle hitting the walls and the screaming that followed. And the squeaking of his parent's old bed that had followed that screaming, every time.

Even now he was hard and soft at the same time. Hard, ironically enough, with his body's hunger and need, soft with his mind's urge to make all the old promises. "I didn't hurt you; I would never hurt you. I just throw things, that's all, baby; you know that."

_And he always fucking went back. Just like I'll go back, and Brian will take me back. Because I'll tell him he's right, that I deserve every word he said tonight. Without him, I'd be dying in a methadone haze, a nobody, a has been, another fucked up rocker . . ._

"Oh Brian," he whispered to the man who'd just tossed him out. "Please . . . just be there for me and we'll help each other through this somehow."

A week later, Maxwell Demon was dead, a stone cold sober Curt Wild was making music with Jack Fairy in Berlin, and the world would never be the same again.

 

_-end-_

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the following script direction:
> 
> _The sky is full of stars. Then -- suddenly -- there's a crash of doors._
> 
> In a massive LONG SHOT_ Mandy watches Curt come tearing out of a rear door. The third-story window bangs open and Brian's head sticks out, shouting after him. There is blood on his mouth_


End file.
